When Herbicide Has a Name

Maria the mum

This fall we finally broke down and hired a landscaping company to do something with our yard. After a decade of gardening attempts and failures, and I'm sorry to say that I'm not putting too fine a point on this, I finally, officially gave up. My compost heap is filled with the evidence of the plant carnage I have wrought through the years. It's safe to say that I don't have a gift for gardening. At all. And after a decade of failure, I don't even like gardening any more.

So, we hired a company to fix things. And fix things they did. For the first time since we moved in, the yard looks great!

That's the good news. The bad news is that the pressure is on. We paid a talented professional a good deal of money to draw up a plan, and to do the work, and now we have to keep it up. And that's a lot of pressure.

Decorative grasses Grace, Greg and George

But then today, the stakes got much, much higher. Today, my daughter went through all the flower beds, and gave names to all the new plants. I couldn't believe it. I would have been plenty happy to keep the yard looking nice, and the flower beds weeded. I would have been happy to learn a thing or two, like the types of plants we have, and suggestions for care. But it turns out that's not enough any more. Now I need to be able to address them by name. Just to give you an idea - we have a shrub named Sarah and another named Leana, a day lily named Amanda, some creeping flox named Tommy, Jonathan, and Samantha, and a hosta named Kayla.

It's a given that some of these guys aren't going to make it. It's a sad fact that I don't know how to prevent the widespread death and suffering of the plants in my yard. And now it just got personal. I have a horrible suspicion that there are going to be dozens of little plant funerals in my future.